THE PROPER TIME TO CUT WHEAT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3003, 9 February 1881, Page 4

THE PROPER TIME TO CUT WHEAT.

An English farmer's experience is related in regard to that much debated question, whether wheat should be allowed to become fully ripe before being cut or should be cut down while still green. This farmer has held his farm fifty years, and he says that his long experience has taught him that corn should be cut much earlier than is customary with most farmers. His rule is to cut the wheat as soon as it looks dead at the bottom, though green in the straw above. He believes that the wheat when cut still feeds on the sap left in the straw, and he thus obtains a bold grain of bright color, which realises a market price higher than hi 3 neighbor can get. Of course this system might be successful in some cases, but a great deal would depend upon the care bestowed on the harvesting. The theory that the wheat feeds on tho green straw is plausible enough, bnt so it would, it may be presumed, if left standing. The rule that the straw should be dead at the bottom, appears to be a good one, for no more sap will then be drawn from the earth. It is safe, it would seem to cut wheat at any time between the ripening of the bottom straw, and the complete ripening of the ear.